IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2020 - 61

society" [2]. These technologies carry profound threats
[3]-[5], and their current governance is weakening democratic ideals and their potential to serve the common
good [6]. Yet, information and communications technologies (ICT) - both traditional media and new, artificial
intelligence-steeped social media - are also potent
means of nurturing the needed understanding, values,
and mobilization, however [7]. They must be governed to
arouse the necessary levels of attention, understanding,
care, and mass action.
This need and possibility is not widely discussed in
mainstream academic and societal arenas, not even in
prominent, quite detailed prescriptions for "transformative policies" [1], [8] by which to reconcile the sustainable
development goals with respect for planetary boundaries
within a fast-narrowing time frame. These proposals, like
current science and scholarship more generally, invest a
striking level of hope in civil society as the needed impetus for change, without acknowledging the fact that current information environments are inadequate for
stimulating the needed mass public mobilization and
transformations. Existing recommendations are incomplete - and will not be sufficiently heeded - if unaccompanied by clear recommendations and action plans
to manage and reform traditional mass media and harness new digital media and AI to stimulate changes in
values, understanding and social engagements that in
turn can transform legislation and economic policies.
Recognition of this - and, thus, action to harness of
ICTs to the common good and sustainability goals -
may hinge on overcoming dominant misunderstandings
of both traditional and new media as neutral transmitters of information rather than constitutive of reality
through the shaping of subjectivities and of meaning [9],
along with other common, historically conditioned, and
erroneous assumptions about information and communications technologies that sustain the status quo [10].
Insufficiently attentive to obstacles to the hoped for
societal mobilization, or perhaps recoiling from fear of
social engineering, few are asking whether and how AI
can be used to help foster the vitally needed changes in
institutions, values, and worldviews in ways that respect
human rights and principles of democracy, equity, and
fairness. They are either not hearing or not heeding
experts on AI, who stress that decision making about AI
and its impacts is inescapable, and that its wise, democratic governance for the common good is urgently
needed and holds historically unprecedented potential
to reshape society for the common good.

Illustrating the Omission
With few exceptions, leading academic research on global environmental change and earth systems science is
vague when it comes to the how of social change. At
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most, academic analyses tout multi-stakeholder dialogue
and greater public participation, measures that thus far
have not been visibly achieved, much less brought the
needed levels of institutional and structural changes [9].
The topics of communications media reform and AI governance are rarely raised outside a subset of social-science media studies, even when (now AI-infused)
communications media are identified as a problem.
Randers et al. [1] identify five transformative policies
to reconcile Agenda 2030 development goals with
resource- and environmental quality concerns ("planetary boundaries" [11]), calling for rapid action to green
energy matrixes and development models, increase
access to education, and reduce global inequality.
Sachs et al. [8] augment to six the number of transformative policies needed, adding more attention to social
movement dimensions of the challenge and to both
positive and negative potentials of "Artificial intelligence
and other digital technologies - sometimes referred to
as the Fourth Industrial Revolution - [which] are disrupting nearly every sector of the economy," including,
specifically, the problem of manipulation by social
media [8, p. 810].
One of the four major governance mechanisms that
Sachs et al. propose to operationalize the Transformations is "Social activism to change norms and behaviors."1 They discuss how technologies of the Fourth
Industrial Revolution might be harnessed to achieve
positive change in a myriad of areas, but not their
potential to stimulate the needed activism and "changes
in the hearts and minds of the people," which they note
often precede - and drive - changes in legislation and
economic policies [8, p. 812]. If changes in people's
"hearts and minds" are a crucial conditioner of action, it
would seem logical to start with, or at least dedicate
more attention to, the problem of how to foster such
changes in favor of the equity, development, and environmental concerns encapsulated in the SDGs. Sachs
et al.'s analysis gives no cues as to how this crucial first
step will be reached, just as it is silent on how their otherwise impressively comprehensive framework listing
myriad policies conducive to achieving the SDGs actually might win public favor and be adopted.
A legacy of the linear model of the science-policy interface, this silence is endemic in academia. The same
imprecision characterizes earlier scholarship, when traditional mass media (television, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc.), not AI-saturated, new interactive "social"
media, were relatively more dominant. Raskin et al.'s
2002 book Great Transition" [12, p. 47] discusses social

1

The others are goal-based design and technology missions, goal-based
organization of government and financing, and diplomacy and international
cooperation for peace, finance, and partnerships.

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